Actress Yvette Mimieux, star of 'The Time Machine,' dead at 80

Yvette Mimieux was found dead Tuesday morning, a rep for her family confirmed. She had just turned 80 on January 8, and she passed away in her sleep of natural causes.

The latter garnered her strong reviews for playing a mentally disabled girl, and at the time she said: "I supposed I have a soulful quality. I was often cast as a wounded person, the ‘sensitive’ role." She played Dean Martin’s child bride in the 1963 pic "Toys in the Attic" and teamed with director Serge Bourguignon in the films "The Reward" and "The Picasso Summer."

She would take a detour and guest star on two episodes of the Richard Chamberlain series "Dr. Kildare." She played a surfer who was dealing with epilepsy and had the distinction of being the first person on American television to show her navel. She would go on to star as one of the leads in "The Most Deadly Game," a 1970 Aaron Spelling series for ABC in which she replaced Inger Stevens, who died a month before production began. Mimieux later would write a thriller for Spelling and Leonard, who produced "Hit Lady" as a TV film for ABC in 1974. She starred as a remorseless assassin in the telepic.